The long and dangerous journe to Egoli. The Chamber of mines set up their own recruiting system to make sure that workers arrived safely on the the Rand and were directed to the gold mines
This section discusses how the mines used migrant workers to provide cheap labour. ‘Migrant’ workers were those who left their homes in various parts of Southern Africa and travelled long distances to the mines. They worked for a certain time, then went home again. This system of using migrant workers on a mine (or a farm or a factory) is called the migrant labour system
When
the gold mines started, migrant labour not new. In South Africa there
were many migrant workers before the discovery of diamonds and
gold. In the summer time, farm labourers used ravel from their homes
to the white farms to work there. They would go home again when season
was over. In Natal, many Indians were brought from India to work on the
sugar farms for five or ten years. Some went home again. Others stayed
in South Africa.
When diamond and gold mining started, thousands of men became migrant
workers. Most of them were black farmers. They left their land for a
while to work for wages in the mines.
At first, only the young, unmarried men left. They were sent by their
chiefs who needed their wages to pay taxes. These taxes had been imposed
on the people by the government. A few young men left of their own accord.
As time went by, people needed more and more money. Married men, too,
became migrant workers. They were forced to earn money for their families
- just as, before this, the young single men worked to earn money for
the chiefdom. The identity of the chiefdom was breaking down.
Soon the family unit was also threatened. The time the men spent away
from home became longer. It took them longer to earn the money that their
families needed.
Each time they went back to work, they would hope it was for the last
time. They hoped that time they would save enough money to support the
family so that they could stay at home go back to farming.
But most men remained migrants until they too old to work for themselves
again.
For many years Sotho migrants have sung a song as crossed the Caledon River (Mohokare) and come to work on the Rand mines. The song expresses their feelings as the journey changed them from farmers to workers:
Mohokare, now I put on another blanket,
Now that I have crossed you,
Wash me from the touch I have had
With woman at home.
Here I cross to the other side.
And I do not know what dangers face me.
Perhaps this is the last time I cross you here.
And if ever I have the chance of crossing you again
Wash me clean, Mohokare, and make me a pure man
Make me a man who is fit to go to heaven
Cleanse me from my sins because I am going to
The dangerous place where I may lose my life.Now if ever I do not come back it will be just unfortunate.
But now that I have crossed you,
All the evil things I have done
May they move with you and go down.In crossing the river I become a new man,
Different from the one I was at home.
At home I was secure
But now that I am on this side
I am in a place of danger,
Where I may lose my life at any time.
So prepare me for my death.Now that I am this side
I assume a different attitude from the one
Where they are soft with other men.
This side they have to be tough to assume manhood
Not be soft like the women at home.(from Another Blanket, published by AIM)
Most migrant workers had two very different lives:
- One life was at home on the land, working with the family and with friends.
- The other life was in the towns or the mines, working with machines and with many strangers, often in a hostile atmosphere.
In one life they were family men, loved and respected as sons, husbands and fathers. In the other, they lost their dignity and even their humanity. Young or old, black workers were referred to as ‘boys’; one mine-owner called them ‘mere muscular machines’ - there only to produce wealth for their employers.
Work lost its old meaning. As migrant workers they worked for strangers - they worked for a wage.
WHITE TOWNSPEOPLE BUT BLACK MIGRANTS
Not
all migrants were black. There were also white mine-workers on the
mines. Many of them came from other countries; others were struggling
white farmers looking for jobs. They were all new to the Witwatersrand,
and most of them hoped to earn enough money to be able to go home again.
Most of them never went back. They sent for their families to join
them and became full-time wage-earning workers. They became the townspeople
of the Witwatersrand.
But black migrants could not settle with their families in the towns. There
were a number of reasons for this:
- Firstly, their wages were too low. Black miners were paid just enough to support a single man in town and not a family. The land in the Reserves had to support the migrant’s family.
- Secondly, there were no houses for black miners’ families on the mines. The miners themselves slept in compounds.
- Thirdly, the Pass Laws would not allow migrant workers to settle with their families in the towns.
THE MINE-OWNERS AND THE MIGRANT LABOUR SYSTEM
In
the early years of mining, mine-owners did not like the migrant labour
system very much. They complained because men would come to work for
short while in the mines and that they would leave. ‘The native
. . . reluctantly offers himself; or one of his family industrial worker
for just so long as the hut tax can be earned,' grumbled a President
of the Chamber of Mines. The mine owners at first preferred black
farmers to be cut off from the land completely, so that they could
become full-time workers.
Rhodes, as prime minister of the Cape as well as a leading mine owner, passed
the Glen Grey Act in 1894 to try to force people off the land. He told his
government that the law ‘removed Natives from that life of sloth and
laziness, taught them the dignity of labour and made them contribute to the
prosperity the state. It made them give some return for our wise a good government.’
Although this particular was not too successful, its was clear; to provide
labour for the mines.
As the years went by, the mine-owners began to see that migrant labour system suited them very well. It was cheaper to feed and house just one worker instead of paying wages to support a whole family in the towns.
Mine-owners wanted black workers, but they did not want black families. They wanted the families to stay behind in the Reserves. They wanted their black workers to have just enough land in the Reserves for their families to live on. But there must not be enough land to support them fully. ‘The surplus of young men must earn their living working for a wage,’ they said.
So the black migrant labour system was cheaper for the mines. The Chamber of Mines did not have to worry about building houses for the families of unskilled workers. It did not have to worry about building schools and hospitals for old people, women and children. The people in the Reserves would have to look after themselves. Reserves would support them, with some help from the black miners’ wages. The system of migrant labour saved the mine-owners millions of rands every year.
In the midst of trouble and sorrow
We left our children at home
Children full of tears,
Crying tears: ‘Father gone, is gone,
God, help fathers to return.’
Happiness is returning with spears.
(Sotho song.)
1893: ‘Man for man, blacks are better farmers than the Europeans.‘ (Traveller in the Cape.)
1932: ‘Actual desert conditions have in fact been created where once good grazing existed.’ (Government report.)
We have seen that black farmers were forced off the land into wage
labour. This did not happen because they were bad farmers.
In fact, in the early years
of the mining towns black farmers in different parts of South Africa produced
a surplus of food, which they were able to sell to the towns.
Yet we find that the picture had changed forty years later. Black farmers
by then were struggling, producing less and less from the land. In this section
we try to understand what brought about this change. We look at the reserves
- the other end of the migrant labour system.
The basic problem was that black farmers no longer had enough land. The reserves,
which had been created in different parts of the country, were too small.
We have already seen that most of the land had been lost through conquest.
Laws
such as the Land Act of 1913 ‘squeezed’ the black farmers even
more, by preventing them from using land outside the reserves. As a result
the reserves became very crowded. There was simply not enough land to support
the people living there. And there was even more pressure on the men to become
wage-earners - migrant workers
A i-ye! Ngana yakabona –
A i-ye! Famine has come.
The rabbit has lost its child.
(Tonga song)
As more and more men left home to become migrant workers, life changed for those who stayed at home. Women, children, the sick and the old remained at home. They had to take over the men’s jobs and look after the affairs of the family.
The land had to be cultivated. Taxes had to be paid.Children had to be cared for. The sick had to be nursed.The dead had to be buried.
The women worked the hardest. But it did not matter how hard women, old people or children worked - there was too little land. The soil got poorer and poorer.
To make things worse, as soon as the young boys were old enough to take over their fathers’ work, they, too, left home to look for work in the towns.
As
the years passed, the reserves did not develop. Factories, big shops
and cities did not grow in the reserves. Neither did rich farms.
In fact, the reserves became poorer.
What happened to the reserves therefore was that:
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They were places where the children were brought up. When they were old enough, many could find jobs in the mines or the towns as migrant workers.
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The families in the reserves looked after the people who were too sick or too old to work for wages.
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The reserves were places where men could live with their families - when they were not working for wages.
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They were places where women lived in separation from their husbands.
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The reserves were places for those who had no jobs. They were places of waiting for work.
They
were places of labour supply for the mines and the factories.
And so, as the mines and factories got richer from the system of
migrant labour, so the reserves became poorer. The reserves were
no longer the farming lands.
Which fed all the people. The reserves became reserves of labour.
Go, let us go my friends, go home.
Go, let us go to see our little hills.
We’ve long been working on the mines,
We long have left our homes for this, the place of gold.When we get home they will be waiting there,
Our Mothers happy when we come inside,
At Mazandekeni, home, my home.Return my brother, from the place of gold.
Reject the town.
Cherish your mother, children and your own.
They’ll clap their hands for joy
When you come home,
At home where they are waiting.
Come, come home.
(Zulu song)The two of us Mother, will pine on the mine dumps
But we will meet again at the Ntombela Pass.
(Zulu song)